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You may have seen some antics as students parade around town cheering and making noise. As they should. Frosh week is an important event for the whole city, since Toronto is essentially what the Americans would call a “college town.”

This week, nearly 200,000 post-secondary students arrived or returned to school at Toronto’s four universities and four colleges, which have multiple campuses spread throughout the city. That’s a population bigger than Regina, Barrie or St. John’s, with more students at nearby GTA campuses. Then there are all the instructors and professors teaching them, adding even more to the population of this city within a city.

Imagine a city of that size comprised mostly of late teenagers and early 20-somethings, with a smaller group of older bohemians called grad students. The energy would be incredible.

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Never mind those whiny reports of disengaged and apathetic millennials. The kids are all right, and the oldsters making such judgments are misinformed. The generational challenges they might face are steeper than yours or mine were, but they haven’t tuned out at all. They’re quite tuned in, but the frequency is a little different, so adjust your dial.

I’m lucky enough to teach at the University of Toronto. I say lucky because having students in your life is a wonderful thing and an extra-strength dose of uncynical thoughts and imagination.

We all pick up baggage over time that makes it hard not to be cynical despite our best efforts. It’s everywhere — just glance at newspaper comment sections.

Earlier this week primary and high school kids returned to school, and the lack of children playing in the streets and parks by day gives the false impression that summer is over.

But the post-secondary student influx gives the city a late-summer injection of life. In a factory town, it would be as if idle plant workers were called in from a long layoff and the production lines started up again. Brains are working, keyboards are clicking and dusty gears have started to turn.

For all the creative thought and work they bring to the city, the city also offers something back.

Students attending downtown campuses find the line between school and city is a blurry one; living in the city is as much of an education for the students as their classes. Many students who already live here experience their first real taste of adult freedom, even if they still live at home.

For those from towns, small cities or the countryside, the start of school may be their first taste of the big city. Look for them on the streets; they’ll be the ones with their heads up and showing a visible sense of awe. City-cynicism hasn’t taken hold yet. Some of them might eventually even fall in love with this place and stay.

The suburban campuses are just as much part of the city, too. If you’ve been to York University lately you’ve certainly noticed the urbanity creeping in around a campus that was once located in open territory. The subway construction will certainly bring even more neighbourhood to the neighbourhood when finished too.

The Humber College North campus in Etobicoke has become a regional hub; stand by its transit stop and see buses come from four separate municipalities. A similar hub-like feeling is found at the big Centennial College campus in Scarborough. U of T’s Scarborough and Mississauga campuses are now much less satellites of the downtown St. George campus than places with their own centres of gravity.

Just as everyone, farmer or not, celebrates the harvest, we should also join in a little with the all the frosh. They make the city better.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.

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